


Changes

by OfficerAerynSun



Category: Stargate (1994), Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 01:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4984732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfficerAerynSun/pseuds/OfficerAerynSun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 9 AU - Sha'uri did not die in Forever In A Day. But when she finally returns, she finds her husband a very different man from the one she knew. One night, she reflects on what is different about both of them. One-shot, Sha'uri POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changes

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, standard disclaimer applies. I don't own the Stargate franchise or the characters. This is just for fun. 
> 
> Also, I use Sha'uri rather than Sha're because, well, I like it better and I can.

_There are so many differences now._

She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, her whole body stiff. _Tense_. Metal springs dug into her spine, heavy blankets itched at her skin. She was exhausted - and yet every nerve vibrated. A story he’d told her once drifted to mind - something about a princess who could feel the tiniest lump under a stack of the even most luxurious mattresses. _That_ princess hadn’t been able to sleep either. She’d been kept awake by niggling discomforts, hyper-aware of the tiniest sensation, the slightest change.

But that princess… she was a heroine. Suffering to achieve her happiness. Passing a test that would unlock the rest of her life.

That wasn’t what Sha’uri felt.

Each small nudge, each shift or jerk or change of pressure. None of it was a test. There was no prize awaiting her for suffering each twinge, biting it back with a gentle smile to reassure the world that she was alright.

What she felt was the painful stab of consequence.

He breathed steadily beside her in the darkness of the bedroom. _In, out. And again_. It was a comforting sound - something that had anchored her in years long past. She remembered warm nights on Abydos, wrapped in each other, her head on his chest as they drifted towards sleep. Her cheek would rise and fall as he breathed and she would revel in what they had accomplished together. They had survived great trials - and they had found such perfect life from it. There were moments when she felt she could have lived on just the sound of his steady breathing alone.

But now that sound did not soothe her. It was pleasantly familiar, yes - but something beneath the surface sounded wrong. Like a song remembered from childhood, sung ever so slightly out of tune. It echoed a fear she’d had since the moment she stepped through the gate, broken, tired, but free of a long-fought demon:

_They couldn’t be as they were. Could they?_

Sha’uri shifted slightly in the bed, rolling onto her side to watch him as he slept.

His face was the same. Older, yes. More tired. There were lines she didn’t recognize. It took all her composure not to reach out and trace them - to try and memorize them. His cheeks were covered in stubble and she wondered when he’d decided to grow a beard. It made his kisses feel different. It scratched as he laid reverent lips on her skin. It was rougher -- _Daniel_ was rougher.

He was _harder_ , too. In so many ways. She wasn’t sure she’d even counted them all yet. But it was his laugh that first struck her. The awkward, self-conscious chuckle that had charmed her on that fateful night back on Abydos was replaced by something else now. Less open. More… bitter. It jarred in her ears, harsh, defensive. She suspected that few others heard any change at all. But she’d been holding the memory of him so tightly in her mind, even the slightest change was like whiplash. When she heard him laugh now, she wanted to hold him to her heart and wash away whatever hurt had hardened him so.

_And it turned her insides cold to know that it was - at least in part - because of her._

Even his body was harder. She’d felt the difference the moment he’d gathered her into his arms when she stepped through the gate. He clung to her so tightly it made her bones ache. The soft, lean body she’d once explored every inch of had become more sturdy, impervious to the way her nails dug into his back, too fearful of losing him again to let go. Later, when they were alone, she could examine the changes further. She saw the firm muscles, the odd scar marring his skin, the way he held himself now.

It seemed few traces of _her_ Daniel were left.

A stab of guilt seared in her stomach. _That thought was unkind_. Surely, he’d been able to catalog all the differences in her. And they were numerous. Like his, they ran so much deeper than skin. She looked in the mirror now and saw a woman older than her years. Tired, too skinny, features shadowed, curves given way to sharp angles of bone - like a sickness had clung to her for too long and she was not yet healed. _In a sense, that was precisely what had happened…_

There were scars too. The process of removing Amaunet - _she felt a surge of bitterness even thinking the name_ \- had been a difficult one. _Especially difficult,_ or so the Tok’ra had said. Her body was marked from it. A constant reminder of how she had been used, how she had been too weak to stop it. Every look in that mirror showed her a shadow of a once familiar face - and she wondered how Daniel could see anything more than a husk of the woman he’d loved. Her cheeks had held more color once, her eyes had been brighter. Her laughter rang out far less often than it once had…She felt fragile, like a hollow soap bubble that could burst at any moment. _And she hated it._

And as she laid beside him in the dark, the memory of the evening’s love-making still fresh in her mind, she wondered how he could still want her at all.

Her stomach clenched into a cold knot. _What if it was too late? What if the changes were too much?_

_Maybe we can’t really recognize each other any more._

But then, something shifted. Ever so slightly - like pages of one of his books rustling in the breeze.

Daniel stirred in his sleep, a slight frown clouding his slack features. Instinctively, she stretched out her hand and rested it lightly on his cheek. Her fingers drifted up to his hair, stroking gently. And, almost instantly, he relaxed. The harsh line of his mouth softened and whatever had disturbed his peace was gone.

Sha’uri blinked in surprise. She hadn’t done that - touched him like that - in so many years. Truth be told, she’d almost forgotten she used to do it at all. Her fingers hesitated against the stubble of his cheek for just a moment, almost afraid that something so familiar would surely blow up in her face. It would end and leave her shattered. But it didn’t. He simply settled back into sleep, eased by her touch.

That’s when she saw it - just for a moment.

The lines were gone, the beard, the man who kept things at a distance - for just a moment, he was the Daniel she’d met what felt like lifetimes ago. For a moment, he was soft and earnest and painfully awkward and she remembered how he’d looked on their first night together, as she’d watched him sleep, the sound of sandstorms whipping outside their door.

A rush of intense affection filled her in the silence of an unfamiliar bedroom on a planet she didn’t really understand. She was utterly alone in the universe - and he was that anchor she yearned for once more. Even if it was only for a second - _she recognized him_.

Her Daniel was still there. Somewhere. Buried under years of pain that - just maybe - she understood better than either of them had thought. All she had to do was be patient. Perhaps this Daniel Jackson was more of a twisting maze than the one she had married. But she doubted anyone was as determined to find the center as she was.  

_He was all she had left._

Tears pricked her eyes and she was glad he was asleep. He would only worry, ask what was wrong - and she could not begin to express her thoughts aloud. Not yet. One day she would make him understand. But they had work to do first.

She scooted closer to him, curving her body around his chest, resting her head on his shoulder.

As her body finally gave way to the pull of sleep, she realized something else. _Their bodies still fit._ No matter how different they seemed, they still molded to each other. Seamless. One. _No hard muscles or sharp angles could change that_. She nuzzled his chest gratefully.

_Perhaps there weren’t really so many differences after all._

  
  
  



End file.
